


Actions Speak Louder Than Words

by welcometolotr



Series: EOAW Silmarillion Prompt Challenges [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Assumptions, First Impressions, Gen, Gondolin, Prompt Fic, actions speak louder than words
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 15:06:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/welcometolotr/pseuds/welcometolotr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a festival night in Gondolin, and Aredhel has shooed off her son to enjoy the parties while she shoulders the weighty responsibility of entertaining an elfling for the evening, ostensibly to take her mind off of the husband she's just run away from. <br/>She's rather surprised when someone finds her, even more surprised that it happens to be the sage Pengolodh (who she doesn't have the best opinion of), and very much unsettled that he seems to understand people in the same way that she does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Actions Speak Louder Than Words

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt fill for "Pengolodh / Aredhel / actions speak louder than words".

            Aredhel laughed softly as she tickled the child, light notes tinkling on the air and mingling with the music of the festival outside. The elfling’s smiles were infectious, and were swiftly banishing the darkness in her heart. The separation from her husband, though willingly, had worn on her. Her son had been shooting her worried looks for the past several weeks, but she had shooed him off and told him to enjoy the new delights of this city that her brother had built.

            “Oh, you _are_ a sweet one!” she giggled, feeling more like herself than she had in centuries. Poking the child lightly in the stomach, she smiled and marked the resemblance of this elfling to her youngest brother at the same age. Argon had worn the same hairstyle and impetuous little smile as this son of the House of the Fountain. The boy blurbled at her happily, attempting to poke her stomach in return but only managing to reach her breasts. She grumbled. “Very funny, runt.”

            “His name is Penros, my lady.” A shadow detached itself from the archway and moved into the light of her lamps. It was the elf they called the ‘Sage of the Noldor’, Pengoloþ. She didn’t think much of the title.

            “Hello. You know his family? They thought I might like to meet him. Said that they would appreciate me babysitting him for a while and then ran off to dance. I gather that they haven’t had much time alone since his birth. I certainly didn’t, after I bore my son. ” She rather thought that they’d seen the dimness in her eyes and foisted the kid off in an attempt to distract her, but then again thinking the best of people was what had gotten her stuck in Nan Elmoth in the first place. Either way, she wasn’t about to admit anxieties and fears to this particular elf. “They deserve to have some fun during the festival without a child in their arms, and I don’t mind   
  
            He listened to her as if he could hear the thoughts running through her head, eyes piercing through her own arrogantly in a fashion that very much reminded her of her father doing the same. “His parents named him after me. In part,” he amended quickly. “It seems they have great respect for my writings, scant as they are.”

            Well, there went her impression of his arrogance. He was blunt, though, a trait she only respected in some close friends. Like Celegorm. Celegorm was wonderfully blunt. Pengoloþ wasn’t nearly as flirty, though. “You write well. But I would not name my child after Rúmil in some way, simply because I honor the efforts of the greatest of the Lambengolmor.”

            He eyed her carefully, and after a pause offered “The greatest?” in a way that likely implied that he felt some amount of respect for her eldest uncle’s accomplishments, though not enough to make him comfortable with stating it implicitly. She didn’t really care, though, having only chosen Rúmil off of the top of her head to make a point. She shrugged and nodded.  He picked the thread of conversation back up again. “You have read my histories?”  
  
            Aredhel sighed, not wholly willing to engage in a complicated conversation of controversial topics and history on a festival night. “In part. Your diction is impeccable, though the topics are not always to my liking. It does not seem to me as if there is very much depth to your recollections, but I would not expect more of you since you did not experience the events yourself.” Realizing she might have gone too far, she swiftly amended.  “I’m sorry, that was blunt. I haven’t had too much interaction recently with anyone except my brother and son, and they are accustomed to my way of speaking.”  
  
            He shook his head and held up a hand. “If anyone should be apologizing, it is me, my lady. I am honored that the princess of the Noldor has read my writings, and sorely bothered by the fact that they are not nearly as finished as I would like. I have much revision to do, as you have just pointed out. Words never came naturally to me, but oration even less so, and after my majority I realized that if I truly wanted to become a scholar, I would have to pick the lesser of the two hardships.”   
  
           Pausing, he moved from the arch towards her bench, and without hesitation sat down next to her, though with enough space that the situation would still seem proper to an elf happening upon the courtyard. Not that she cared! With only one female and fourteen male relatives all of varying closeness, she had ceased caring about propriety she hit the age of twenty. Pengoloþ, though, seemed to care, and so she didn’t comment.  He took her silence as an agreeable sign to continue.

            “I’ve learned to write in perfect technical form, but the depth, as you said, is still difficult to come by. Do you write?”  
  
            She stifled a sigh and answered, and the conversation continued for a half hour or more. It wasn’t particularly enlightening, or enjoyable, and after some time she began to take more notice of his actions than of his words. Celegorm would have called them ‘tells’, and Eol would have deemed it unsightly fidgeting, but she realized that the elf had the habit of twisting out threads on his sleeve whenever he seemed unsure of something. Accordingly, his sleeve was a bit threadbare at the ends. His words betrayed nothing, however.   
           She supposed that this was the method by which he survived in the cutthroat world of Lambengolmor scholars, when he himself was relatively young and untried in comparison to his colleagues. His eyes wandered, taking in details, and he willingly let the child Penros fiddle with little bits of his hair. His voice seemed rather flat to her, but the elfling seemed to be listening to tones she couldn’t hear, and remained contentedly silent.

            His hair was wispy at the ends and slightly messy. His bangs were ragged. To all accounts, it looked as if he cared more for his work than this appearance, an attitude she saw often in Noldor. His clothes, though, were fine, and his face was clear, and were she younger, unmarried, and a far sight less jaded, she would certainly put him on her list of elves to flirt with. But she wasn't any of those things, and so she just watched, nodding and voicing assent at the appropriate times. He probably thought her dreadfully superficial and flighty – she wasn’t truly engaging him in deep conversation in any level. But it didn’t matter to her, and so when he made to rise at last and leave, she only nodded and thanked him carelessly for the company.  
  
            Pengoloþ’s farewell, though, left a mark on her. “Thank you for listening, my lady. My cares are not for you to worry about and yet I have prattled on to you about every little thing imaginable. I know you do not care for my books, and I thank you for not dismissing me out of kind. I don’t oft encounter high-born elves who can discriminate between a person and the work they produce. So- thank you. And good evening.” With that, he gave a little wave to the elfling and swiftly left the courtyard.  
  
            Aredhel frowned and hugged Penros a little closer to her. What had the elf been referring to? Did she really somehow recognize Pengoloþ as a person outside of the rather biased and dry histories he had authored? Was he that desperate for acknowledgement that he would find it where none was necessarily offered?  
  
            Or did he notice that she watched his fidgeting, his bitten lip? Had he realized that she relaxed ever so slightly when the child in her lap showed easy recognition and acceptance of him? Had he truly understood that she judged him not through his written words or his speech, but through the small actions that she had observed?

            Penros made a small sound and she loosened the hug and shook her head. Standing and twisting to stretch and get rid of the stiffness of sitting for so long, she hoisted the toddler onto her hip in a familiar movement and made towards the archway. “Let’s go find your parents, runt.”


End file.
